1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer software unit testing, and particularly to server side logic unit testing in an application server environment.
2. Description of Background
Unit testing is the process of validating that individual units of software source code are working properly. While unit-testing approaches can be very effective in testing stand alone or simple applications, numerous difficulties arise when attempting to perform unit testing in complex applications. For example, some e-commerce applications leverage services and commands provided by a run-time infrastructure that is dependent upon the availability of numerous components. Interdependency on components such as a front-end web page, a messaging system, a database, and other components can reduce the effectiveness of unit testing and significantly impede development cycle time. Moreover, even when components are made available to support unit testing, they often fail to support full unit testing, resulting in performance of a more limited end-to-end test that may not adequately handle certain failure conditions.
JUnit is a popular open-source testing framework for Java unit testing. It would be beneficial to develop a method to enable the use of a unit testing framework, such as JUnit, in an application server environment to increase the speed of testing and ensure higher quality source code development and deployment. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a method to perform server side logic unit testing in an application server environment that supports an existing unit testing framework, such as JUnit.